


Wanderlust

by Val_Creative



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Family Feels, Humor, Pregnancy, Romantic Friendship, Sci-Fi, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/pseuds/Val_Creative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of snippets where a pregnant Amy travels two weeks with the Doctor before the birth of another Time Lord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanderlust

X.X.X

I.

X.X.X

 

"Bloody! … _rocks! …_ —Doctor!" The positive, flourishing ions in the atmosphere prevent him from calling back to her with mild, practiced exasperation. But he knows, _KNOWS_ somewhere his intensely… _planet-like_ , to put it a bit unkindly… companion is waddling unsteadily in the grass patches behind him. " _Doctor_!"

Of course, she would be the only one he knew who would be unaffected by the ions _…_

"We are on the Eye of Orion, Amelia Pond." He twirls at the heel, a softly chiding tone and purposely sounding out every syllable to her name; she manages to stop from colliding bell- first into him somehow. "It is one of the most _beautiful_ and _peaceful_ planets ever formed, and all you can think about at the present moment is how the little rocks on this beautiful planet hurt your feet?"

"They are not little rocks, okay? They are very -big- rocks!" Her hazel eyes are beginning to narrow dangerously. And he is beginning to be unsure if this trip was a good idea.

"…you know what else? These shoes have _NO SUPPORT in them_!" Amy screeches, emphasizing the first two words with skyward punches to the air with one of her muddied, baby blue Converses. "And I am _PREGNANT WITH YOUR CHILD!_ SO I CAN COMPLAIN ABOUT WALKING ON ROCKS FOR AS LONG AS I _BLOODY_ WELL PLEASE!"

How support in a shoe that has anything to do with the rocks, the Doctor doesn't fathom a guess then.

If they were on Manussa or Kolkokron, he would completely understand her distress. They were planets full of mean and nasty rocks. But he wouldn't take her there, anyway. They weren't relaxing. And the pregnancy bit… well... there was nothing they could do about that.

It all wouldn't matter to her in a half an hour, anyway. By then, the calming effects of this planet would set in and she would tire herself out, falling asleep bathed in the phosphorescent light of the moon, swollen feet dipping in the cool lake water, and his arm sliding protectively to wrap around her shoulders.

 

X.X.X

II.

X.X.X

 

Admittedly, he is a tad jealous of Amy.

No matter how many times the Doctor regenerates… and he only has less than a handful of opportunities left to him now… his hair continues to refuse transforming to that rare ( _sunny_ and _wonderful)_ ginger. He could fantasize in the shelter of the TARDIS without interruption— tweed-sleeved elbows leaning dreamily over the console— of what shade of ginger his hair could possibly be in the future.

His bony, Time-Lord fingers work; _threading_ ; _kneading_ ; the long, rust-colored strands spilling over his lap as she lay her head down, linking her hands over the space of her baby bump, still mumbling absently to him about the dolls she had sewn in his likeness as a little girl; like he is a skilled, gentle artist at work; like he is creating a masterpiece with her.

 

X.X.X

III.

X.X.X

 

"Fancy touring a flower planet this time before the baby is born? You like flowers, don't you, Pond? You had a garden of them once. Well, in the _dream reality_ , you did. I know a planet _blanketed_ in perfumed flowers! Doesn't that sound nice, Pond?"

His hands are quick to operate the various dials and switches and funny-shaped knobs in front of him, his bow-tie questionably askew from his excitement; his stormy blue eyes are moving rapid-pace from here; there; left; right; up; down; the screens of the console; the ceiling of the TARDIS; turning radiant on her standing beside him.

"Yeah, if the smell of heavy perfume didn't make me nauseous," Amy complains, the flat of a palm pressing into the small of her back as her features grimace, her button-nose wrinkling at some invisible odor. His shoulders slump, his hands falling slightly down at his sides and curling inward as he hesitates at her words, and the child-like radiance fades from his eyes.

"… _oh…_ a _h_ _a_ …" Amy forces a laugh, a little panicked by his reaction, " _y_ -you know… I don't mind if it's flowers. Flowers don't smell bad and _they_ don't make me feel nauseous…"

When the Doctor doesn't look away from the console moodily, one of her hands slips into his.

Stormy blue eyes meets hazel eyes, quietly.

She breaks the silence, squeezing comfortingly before moving away, smirking, "Well, Grumpy Face? What are you waiting for?"

It takes a minute but his grin returns as if it has never left. Her stomach does a complicated somersault and Amy realizes that she would give… a lot to see that expression on him more often.

"You won't regret it. Florana not only has the flowers and seas of warm milk but also a large body of water in the southwest where the bubbles can lift you three feet in the air before dropping you back in." He is back to hovering over the switches and do-dads and dull-colored knobs, talking a mile a minute to her, the grin spreading.

She twists her mouth contemplatively.

"We'll have to come back when I'm not carrying one of the only two living Time Lords in the existence."

 

X.X.X

IV.

X.X.X

 

They don't speak of Rory.

There is nothing to talk about. Nothing. Nothing about his backlash at Amy when they all discovered that she was having not a human's baby, or his baby, but a Time Lord's (— _two heartbeats; it should have been obvious, the parents think to themselves)_. Not the warnings issued by the Doctor for Rory to reconsider his anger ( _—it wasn't even her he was protecting, not solely anyway_ ). Or the sprain in Amy's wrist (— _she excuses herself immediately after eating, glancing out from the corridor as the Doctor smiles habitually in her direction, and leaves to cradle it to herself alone in a spare bedroom)_.

 

X.X.X

V.

X.X.X

 

Amy doesn't go into labor until a week past her due date. He would have been happier with another month. Maybe two months. At least to mentally prepare…

He is very sure the floating coral city they arrived at knew how the handle this birth. The medics of Splendurosa had extraordinary medical technology and reveled to dealing with humanoid births. Even away from the ward she is in— _twenty stories away from his position on the main floor and exiting the building_ — he can still hear her screaming. The joys of having up to forty kilohertz hearing…

He needs a place to prowl about nervously and sort out his thoughts aloud to himself with the necessity of privacy.

The TARDIS remains unsympathetic towards him, dead-bolting itself and sealing up the opening of the outside lock. As if insisting he _returns_ inside the hospital building. _Returns_ to the human woman giving birth to his child. It makes sense. Absolutely. But he wants to prowl.

"What are you… _doing…_?" The side of his fist strikes the navy **POLICE BOX** door, halfheartedly.

Just when the Doctor is partly considering going on something irrational, like throwing the TARDIS keys on the ground and stomping them flat— _just because he could get away with it and sonic them back into proper order later_ —, the hospital communicator he had been given vibrates in his trouser pocket. Several times. This means…

He steps away from his frustratingly opinionated spaceship and retrieves the small, round, yellow item while holding the metal button in the center. "Yes?"

" _Hullo, Doctor, is it you?_ " One of the medics replies, cheerfully.

"Yes… How is Amy?"

" _Oh, quite well. If what you spoke of is true about the Time Lord chemicals in her humanoid body, she should recover easily in another full day."_

His grip tightens on the slim communicator. He bites his lower lip hard. "…what about the baby, then?" The Doctor whispers uncertainly.

" _…Healthy. The delivery couldn't have gone any more beautifully."_

A shaking breath escapes his dry lips. One he did not know he had been holding in.

He murmurs a short thank you before shutting off the transmission. His forehead drops forward to touch the communicator, his eyes closed. A moment passes. The corners of them crinkle as he starts to slowly laugh, running his hands over his face and dark hair, hearts pounding; rejoicing.

"Amy, you magnificent girl..."

 

X.X.X

VI.

X.X.X

 

The infant boy is not a ginger. For the tiniest of moments, he is disappointed.

But it is _tiny_... because the Doctor is soon distracted by the pile of tan-colored quilts being placed in his arms. He stares astonished, _terrified_ of the wrinkled, pink face peeking from them, gurgling contently and making other... _strange_ but captivating noises. His race, _his son_ is staring back at him passively and somewhat curious.

He unfolds the top quilt, pressing his hand shyly to the infant's fleshy chest. Two little heartbeats drum sweetly against a little ribcage.

 

X.X.X

VII.

X.X.X

 

When the baby first opens his eyes, the Doctor is holding him outside the hospital building— _jacketless_ _and_ _a red suspender is slipping from the edge of his shoulder; he argues playfully in a whisper to his reasonably tired companion about where to stop at next_ — and Amy watches then helplessly as some of the luminosity clears from his smile.

"They're green," is the only answer he can provide when she presses the matter.

 

X.X.X

VIII.

X.X.X

 

One exhausting night, as they roam undisturbed through the Torajii System, she discovers the TARDIS humming melodically to her son in the nursery. Come morning, she mutters thanks; _still in her wrinkled, white nightie; forcing back a yawn_ ; _her sleep-warmed cheek flat to the cool wall._ She thought she heard it… hum back a response.

 

X.X.X

IX.

X.X.X

 

"Is he half Time-Lord, then?" Amy asks this, folding the backs of her hands under her chin, and peering interestedly from her sitting position from the other side of where the Doctor is on his hands and suit-knees on the lifted and platformed floor of the TARDIS, his bottom tilted up in the air.

"What's this 'half' rubbish?" His whimsied voice drifts muffled from the dark underbelly of the control room's console. He pops back into view with a grin, smug, "He's all Time Lord," and pops back down where a noise like a rather stuck and heavy switch is finally shoved into place. And he laughs and exclaims with clamorous thrill, "— _THAT'S new_!"

Her eyebrows quirk together as she murmurs, rising from her chair, "How is that possible?"

"Well, theoretically speaking… she's organic," the Doctor stands to pat the chromed metal with a couple loving, hearty smacks, "and the compounds to her structure _grow_ as opposed to…" At the dumbfounded look she gave him, his sentence lingered off.

"…that wasn't what you were asking, was it?"

He sighs, green sonic screwdriver tapping against his palm, agitatedly.

" _Right_. Pond, you aren't human anymore. I've told you that. You haven't been human sin _ccccc_ e…" The end of the screwdriver is motioned wildly at her now baby-less stomach and the Doctor's eyes are drawn down to her lower torso… _down… and still down…_

…And it is taking every ounce of her normally lax restraint to not comment, to not do anything, to not know how or even _if_ he would react to a comment.

By then it is too late to explore her chance further because he returns to waving his lit and whirring instrument over some of the more damaged controls ( _from a previous nasty crash)_ , addressing her over his tensing shoulder, "…You are a humanoid being now. There's a difference. But not the point. The Time-Lord genes override everything else in your case. There have been instances before, where one of the hearts of newborns were weaker than the other and rotted itself away inside the chest cavity. Mostly the heart on the right side of the body, where a human wouldn't have it to begin with…"

He turns around when a strangled cry is made, gauging her horrified expression, and decides to rush over to seize her arm—which is opportune because it feels like Amy is sinking through the platform, numb to the worried touch to the side of her face as he speaks softly, "… _It's rare_...and he's got two very strong heartbeats, Pond. I've checked…"

His fingers brush a lock of her reddish hair behind her ear as the Doctor examines her.

"And you are _very_ pale right now," he says. "I thought you'd want to know that…"

"Let go, Doctor…" Near a fainting fit or not, Amy jerks stubbornly like a panicked animal in his grasp, her hazel eyes glittering. "I have to go see him…"

"Come off it, you are barely standing straight…"

The arm he holds swings in an arc, releasing her.

" _I said LET GO OF ME_!"

Amy stumbles into the open corridor on the second level, gasping as she goes; a whir of red hair.

 

X.X.X

X.

X.X.X

 

Amy's aunt Sharon moves to the next town out of Leadworth. It's not really hard to find her.

She is always glad to see the so-called 'Raggedy Doctor' when said Doctor groans aloud, speaking between his thin fingers covering his face that he is not _'Raggedy'_ anymore and if she would just kindly refer to him as the 'the Doctor' it would be well and good— _as if this is the first time_.

The baby is left in her "excellent care"—Amy assures, as his parents travel four and a half galaxies away.

He swings open the blue **POLICE BOX** door to the planet they land on, allowing his companion to carefully poke her head out and made the first few tentative steps on solid ground. The planet is overwhelming grey and misty and reminds her of Earth after a thunderstorm. She shivers a little at the colder wind whipping, gripping her arms together.

"Have I been here before?" she asks, curiously.

"The Eye of Orion. And, yes, you have. Thought you could use a small vacation." He leaps nimbly from the giant boulders the TARDIS perches from, eyeing the gravelly ground near her with a mounting smirk. "Watch out for those rocks."

 

X.X.X.

XI.

X.X.X

 

They do not remember how they got on the subject of Amy's parents.

They are currently in Augsburg, Germany in 1580 and surrounded by dancers with standing, frilled collars and _forepart_ petticoats; dancers with their partner's faces hovering shamelessly close. He had promised her on the ride in to teach her to waltz there. She is a little surprised that the clumsy space man from the box in the sky carries himself so gracefully as he circles her in the space they receive from the crowd.

The Doctor points out the bald gentleman staring rapt at them nearby (" _Frenchman, bit of a skeptic, always asking other people what he thinks…")_. It feels as if his open hand burns into her waist.

But the subject turns to her parents somehow. And for a moment, Amy wishes that the Time Lord chemicals in her body could at least permit her _a free opportunity_ to reverse time on her own and prevent this discussion. It's not that talking about it makes _her_ sad. But it is bothering _someone else_.

"I know what you are thinking about saying, Doctor. You are thinking about apologizing for deaths that weren't even your doing."

Amy shakes her lowered head, slowly. She wouldn't have it. Not from him. He does not come forward. They are already face-to-face as it is. His breath ghosts her face, thoughtfully. And he is focused on her. So very focused with those stormy eyes.

"Amy—"

She shuts him up the most effective _(...ah, no… blissful… ideal_...) way she can envision.

When her lovely, chapped lips leave his mouth, the Doctor appears flabbergasted— but only at first glance.

She is _human_ ; she is unaware of him repeating this sternly over and over in his own head; and these are all circumstances that could have been avoided with a single thought of self-control. But her very essence _brims_ and _screams_ with infectious candor, with determination.

She is Amelia Pond. The girl who waited for him. A human sucked into a treacherous and picturesque fairytale world fitting to her name. She is bewitching; vivid; magnificent; too damn witty for her own good; a part of something he knows he aches for after many years.

"Doctor—"

And… he shuts her up the most effective way he can envision.

"…you— _Mmm-mmph_!" Amy is subdued behind his cupping hand, glaring as it registers.

 

X.X.X

XII.

X.X.X

 

The Doctor starts shouting in what sounds like a garbled, foreign tongue.

"What is this ruckus?" She arrives in his wardrobe room, narrowly ducking a coral-colored button-up and an elongated shiny black tie that sails over her head. "What, did you lose your favorite bowtie?" He ignores her jab at his personally-admirable fashion choices.

" _WHERE_ is my screwdriver?" The Doctor is soon deep in her personal space, growling lowly.

Amy holds her hands up in mock surrender, scowling back at him, "Oi, why would I know where it is? I can't even use the blasted thing!"

To interrupt them, the screech of what sounds like twisting metal comes from the corridor.

What they find upon sprinting into the room where the teeth-gnashing noise came from is the baby. And the working sonic screwdriver. It takes seconds but the Doctor beams.

" _Brilliant_!" He snatches up his son, spinning in place and kissing the top of his peach-fuzzed head as he shrieks happily in his father's arms. "This is… _BRILLIANT!_ I was _sure_ he wasn't going to understand the properties of the crystal by this age! Amy!" The excited man calls to her by the staircase, placing him down, checking over the screens of the console, and laughing hysterically at the screens fuzz over, "Amy… oh there you are! We are locked out of the control systems of the TARDIS; isn't this wonderful?"

"…Wait, are you telling me that… _HE_ is manually piloting this spaceship?" At his gleeful nod, Amy's face drains color.

"Oh… my… … _Doctor_ , what if he sends us in a black hole?"

He dismisses her statement with a disagreeable noise in his throat, hunching down near his drooling son brandishing the sonic screwdriver in his chubby right hand. "We never escape from it, of course. What else?" The Doctor says informatively, "All I have to do is take it back from him to avoid that from happening and regain control of the TARDIS."

A miniature feeling of dread overtakes her.

"…you aren't going to do that, are you?" she whispers.

The smile creeps wickedly over his sharp, Time Lord features.

" _Let's just see where he takes us first_."

 

X.X.X

XIII.

X.X.X

 

In another sleepless night, she spies on him, fascinated, as he converses fondly and gently rocks the gurgling toddler by the circular view screen window; _heels to toes; heels to toes._

X.X.X

XIV.

X.X.X

 

"See that molecular cloud? That's the _Scorpion Nebula_ , home of the planet San Helios. Everyone says that the Tritovores were created in that nebula... which is partly right. Misunderstood creatures, the Tritovores. I can tell you that story later..."

"In fact… I am going to teach you all of the names of the galaxies and moons and stars and planets. About the organic beings living in them. Because as a Time Lord you need to understand them…"

"I will teach you everything about our race and our history with our home Gallifrey, and the Citadel, the Master, the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Time Wars... about everyone I have ever known… Susan, Ian, Sarah Jane, Mickey, Rose, Jack, Martha, Donna, Jenny, Wilfred, and your Mother…. Oh, the stories I have about _your Mother_ …"

"And I will teach you everything I've ever regretted in 917 years, because you must learn from my mistakes… but you must know everything I came to cherish as well…"

"You must never use violence to settle an argument, no matter what is at stake…"

"You must never change significant points of history or critical events in someone's life..."

"You must never abandon your friends. Believe me, they will become your entire world one day..."

"You must never treat anyone poorly no matter how different they are from you. There are millions of civilizations in existence and they are never all the same. Drink in their cultures. Love the beauty in them. Learn from them. Protect them…"

"Above all, you _must_ allow yourself to reach out to others. Even broken hearts must mend…"

"We are the last of our kind. It will weigh you down for as long as you live…"

"…but remember that most importantly… no matter what happens to us... I will always love you."

 

X.X.X

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A remix to   
> s i l v e r a u r o r a's "this bipolar love affair" on FFN. You do not need to read it before this, but this is its sequel.


End file.
